Joanna Dermenjian will present some of her findings about the quilts made by Canadian women and children during WWII at our next meeting on Monday, November 14.
As an independent researcher and life-long maker, Joanna is investigating women’s domestic and charitable making in cloth and fibres. She is interested in how women have used stitching, both historically and in the present day, to nurture and restore themselves and to create a community with other women for individual and collective well-being. She also explores how women’s everyday domestic textiles and tools reveal stories about their lives, particularly in the 20th century.
Joanna’s research has led her to rediscover a poorly documented quilt-making operation by Canadian women during the Second World War – hundreds of thousands of quilts made by women and children and donated to the British Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS) and the Canadian Red Cross to distribute to soldiers, civilians and hospitals in Britain and Europe.
Twilight Quilters' Guild of Norfolk County 